If those aren’t your style, wear ballet flats, kitten heels, or knee high boots with open toe and heel.

Blue, green, red, purple. Orange and yellow are also strong colours of the season.

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Wardrobe plan ?

With one each of the original In Style items (shirt, shirtdress, jacket, pants) that just makes 4 possible outfits.

If you made a shirt and matching skirt, instead of the shirtdress, you’d have 2 tops, 2 bottoms and a jacket. 5 items and 8 possible outfits.

Add a blouse/ top and the pleated skirt into the mix, and you get 18 outfits from 7 items. Nearly a month of work days.

Add another jacket (cascade, revers, or asymmetric). Makes 27 different outfits if all 8 items co-ordinate.

These blacks and whites don’t match up properly, but hopefully this gives the general idea. Use either blue whites or cream whites. And choose between black and navy.

If you don’t look good in black, white and tan ?
Choose your own favourite neutrals.
Many people, me included, don’t look good in dark colours. Many don’t look good in white. So think of darker and lighter of one neutral. And add a different neutral in between.
Cheer yourself up with colourful accessories !

It’s especially important to wear colours that make your skin tone look good, if you want to look effective. ‘Washed out’ is not a powerful look !

So this group makes a fairly obvious wardrobe.
But if you’d like other wardrobe planning suggestions for work, here are a couple.

Perfectly Packed has a ready-made working travel wardrobe of 8 pieces. Includes casual and more dressy items. Look at the interesting choice of fabric and colour to vary the styles. Add colour or go from work to evening by changing jewellery/ scarves/ shoes. She suggests adding a casual shirt, jeans, and a light sweater to cover even more possible occasions, all in one carry-on case.

You could make this combination yourself by adding a shirt to many wardrobe patterns – check the shirt collar goes with the jacket neckline/ collar. Easy if you use classic jackets such as blazer/ cardigan/ revers styles.

For Business Casual ideas there are several capsule suggestions from Imogen Lamport. Tailored jackets and formal shirts are replaced by more drapey styles in her Relaxed Business capsule, and by knits in her Business Casual capsule.

How could you soften (or sharpen !) these, if pure classics are not your style ? Most of the shapes are fairly relaxed for a casual look. Use tighter fit or more extreme shapes and sharp angles to look more edgey. Add softer trim, rounded corners, jewellery, scarves, for a prettier effect. Many ways to hint at your own rather different style.

For some other seasonal ideas, look at In Style magazine site’s more general suggestions for this spring-summer.

I have always liked the idea of the 8-piece wardrobe, but I would need more than three tops. I would probably go with more tops and one blazer since I live in Florida and it’s just too hot for blazers except for a few weeks a year. Great post with lots of ideas to ponder!